Mark, where are you? Gavan Daws wants to know.

The celebrated historian loves the six-line poem you wrote as a second-grader at Makaha Elementary School in 1981, but he doesn't know your last name or where you live. Hey, did you ever see your mother again?

Of all the writers included in a hefty new literary anthology coedited by Daws and publisher Bennett Hymer, "Honolulu Stories," the poem by Mark made a lasting impression on the historian.

"It's a sad little poem," Daws said. "He is his father's son and his mother is gone."

Daws and Hymer read thousands of stories before selecting the final 350 that are included in the anthology, which will be in bookstores Thursday.

Their goal was to present the stories of the tropical metropolis going back 200 years — the soul of a place through the words of its people. They selected works in nine languages, with translations. Included are short stories, excerpts from novels, scenes from plays, poems, song lyrics, standup comedy and slam.

Herman Melville. Mark Twain. Jack London. Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Hunter Thompson. Darrell Lum. James Jones. Patsy Saiki. Paul Theroux. Rap Reiplinger. Joan Didion.

And on Page 717, Mark. His poem was part of a collection from poetry classes in the public school system taught by writer Eric Chock, who has three of his own pieces in the new anthology.

Neither Chock nor the elementary school knew how to find Mark, Daws said.

"We stood on the top of the mountain and shouted out his name and no echoes came back," Daws said. "My assistant checked with Makaha Elementary, and their records don't go back that far. Wherever we turned, it was a dead end."

The 1,120-page anthology was inspired by similar works done in New York and Los Angeles, said Hymer, founder of Mutual Publishing. The editors began talking about the project four years ago.

"We felt we had one last big thing left in us," he said. "We aren't kids anymore."

They tried to include every ethnic group that had ever lived and worked in Hawai'i, Hymer said.

"We wanted to reflect the diversity of Honolulu," he said. "No group was overlooked. We even had people translate old language newspapers in which a story appeared. No stone was unturned."

They picked works that they wanted to share.

"You pick what you like, what you enjoy," said Hymer, a publisher for 30 years. "And you pick what you think reflects good writing."

Hymer doesn't have a favorite story, though.

"It's like picking your favorite child or grandchild," he said. "I love them all. They all have meaning to me. Honolulu is a prism, and each story gives you a different look at it."

VOICES OF MANY

Author Lois-Ann Yamanaka has two selections in the anthology. Works by 10 students in her writing program, Na'au, were also chosen.

She said that to be in the company of some of history's greatest writers is surreal — for both herself and her students, who are elementary and middle schoolers.

"I hope they realize the importance of it and how ... fortunate they were to be a part of this book," Yamanaka said. "I don't think they understand, but I do and I am just awed."

Yamanaka's two selections in the anthology — a passage from "Behold the Many" and a poem, "Boy Wen' Flunk Eight Grade English Again" — are set in Kalihi, giving the working-class community a voice in the tale of Honolulu.

"These tell the story of Kalihi and what a strangely beautiful place it is," she said. "It's city and it's not city. Way in the back where we live, it's all forest, and down where Boy lives it's a little ghetto."

Honolulu is a complex place, one that no single author could explain fully. Novelist Linda Spalding, who used to live in Kailua but now lives in Toronto, said she was honored to have an excerpt printed from "Daughters of Captain Cook." She owes a debt to Honolulu, because it nurtured her work.

"Hawai'i's flavor is too rich to be caught by any one of us," she said. "But having lived there for 14 years, having become a writer there, I'm glad to be a little ingredient in the big mix."

Best-selling author Kiana Davenport, who has excerpts from her novels "Shark Dialogues" and "House of Many Gods" in the anthology, considers Honolulu "one of the most important cities in the world."

"We have every religion, every culture and race here," Davenport said. "It's a microcosm of the world. Therefore, the literature of Honolulu, and all of Hawai'i, reflects a truly global voice."

The anthology reminds readers of the city's rich history, and her own works underscore the struggles of Hawaiians as they try to preserve their culture, said Davenport, a Hawai'i-born writer who divides her time between the Islands and New York.

"For almost two centuries we have been telling our stories, transcribing them from our oral histories," she said. "To read the collection is to better understand the history of our Islands."

REACHING OUT

The diverse stories, or what Daws called "the sound of many voices," was especially appealing. But Daws, the author of 13 books, including "Shoal of Time," said the project was more difficult than he expected.

"This one kept going and going," he said. "It took me into territories and places and ways of looking at Honolulu that I never imagined."

His research introduced him to unknown writers who had been swept into the folds of history, such as the sugar plantation workers who belonged to a haiku club in 1901. Daws found Punahou students writing pidgin dialogue in 1910. He found a poet in a mom-and-pop store, inmates writing in prison, pig hunters with a taste for prose.

He even found pages from a lost novel by Twain. The anthology includes a reproduced passage from that book in Twain's own handwriting.

But Daws was equally fascinated by the poems of children. He called their writing "pure."

"None of the Mainland anthologies had school kids," he said. "Kids are great writers. Through research and talking to teachers and others, I got a terrific selection from the second grade to the 12th grade. A lot of them are just wonderful."

Their work is precious: One child wants to live in a neighborhood free of suffering while another will do anything — eat a plate of Rocky Mountain oysters or watch "The Sound of Music" for two days straight — to keep from falling into the Ala Wai Canal.

"It shows you the range of people's imagination here," Daws said. "If it can sort of open people's eyes more than they are now, just show them the huge human range of life here for the last 200 years, that would be good."

Of course, finding Mark would be nice, too, Daws said.

"I'd ask him how did it all work out?" he said. "And are you still writing poetry?"